It poured rain all night and was still dull and rainy in the morning. Thank goodness there are beer tents.
I decided to take the big feather out of my Octoberfest hat because of the rain. It was also suggested by Graham and John that I take off the mini tin tart foil that I had replaced a lost button with at an Octoberfest celebration in the 80s.
It was cool so I wore both my jacket with my rain jacket over top.
The Oktoberfest grounds reminded me a bit of a German CNE. There were souvenir stands, game stands, food stands and rides interspersed around the beer pavilions.
Our first pavilion was the Hacker-Pschorr Tent. This tent has a capacity of 9,300 people. At 10:30 am it was difficult to find a seat at a table.The ceiling was painted with a blue sky filled with white clouds surrounded by beautiful buildings. It had an ornate stage in the centre for the brass oompah band. Tunes range from traditional to modern. Lots of Ein Prosit was played and John Denver’s “Country Roads” seemed to be a favourite.
We sat with a group from Dresden. On my nephew Brian’s recommendation, we ordered the roasted chicken and a monster sized pretzel. Brian told me that normally chickens are fattened for two months but the Oktoberfest chickens are fattened for five months. Juicy and delicious. We also ordered 3 beer….it seems they only come in one litre tankards…and it was only 10:30am. Yikes.
We walked around the grounds for awhile. A good 90% of people were in dirndls or lederhosen.
We checked out the impressive Lady of Bavaria….Germany’s Statue of Liberty.
We looked into the Shutzen Festzelt beer tent which was rocking with singing and people standing up on seats but could not find a table.
Our next tent was Weinzelt which also sold wine. Every tent has a band but unfortunately no one was dancing at the wine tent. But that was remedied at the next tent.
Braurosl (Brewer’s Rosi Tent) was, as it turned out, our final tent for the day although we had planned to visit more. We found a place at a lively table of Bavarians, Slovakians, a Russian, and a few Irish guys. There was a group of Parisians behind us. Soon after we settled in, the Slovakians started dancing on the benches and then everyone in our area were dancing on the benches. Good times.
One of the Parisians was a little inebriated and fell onto the table /people beside him but with German efficiency, security came in and ejected him from the building.
Ein prosit played what seemed like every five minutes and everyone would clink their beers. We each had two more litre steins of beer and some food and after several hours of revelry we headed back.
Unfortunately my rain jacket fell under the table and I didn’t realize it was missing until we were back at the hotel. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain for the rest of our trip. I also lost my pedometer.
It was a fun day.
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